


The Bed of Eros

by ElleBrittany



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Chaos, Eros - Freeform, First Kiss, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElleBrittany/pseuds/ElleBrittany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is obsessed with order; the reliable uniformity of the cosmos. John's presence in his life is anything but that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bed of Eros

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to loveanddeathandartandtaxes for the succinct, speedy, and always reliable beta.

The cosmos is simple; uniform, perfectly tuned. Sherlock knows that he is the one who over-complicates everything. He has vastly over-complicated his understanding of love, but this remedial understanding has helped him make sense of his affection for John. He feels deeply indebted to John. John has grounded him, still grounds him. It is loathsome to admit but Sherlock does have a tendency to let his mind completely engulf him, to the point that he forgets where he is, forgets to blink, to breathe, feels his voice evaporating in his throat along with the rest of him. But whenever he feels that hand, John’s hand, on his shoulder, offering him a plate of food or a cup of tea, he feels an irresistible force drawing him back home. John’s presence is a stabilizing agent, like the moon. John keeps him sane; keeps him from veering too far out of orbit.

Eros, Sherlock understands, was born of chaos. Love, gestures of affection, the slow burn of _wanting_ ; these things are foreign to him. He fancies himself above all that, far above the love instinct, the sex instinct, and the traitorous flesh. He is above passion. Passion is, of course, driven by the blood. And he is bloodless.

But he has been this way for far too long, he starts to think. He thinks this because of John. He sees John and he sees a projection of _normalcy_ , a hot-blooded male with carnal needs and physical inclinations. Like most men John chases the orgasm, and he does this to feel good _for the sake of feeling good_. Sherlock does nothing for its own sake. He aspires to feel nothing, to feel empty. And yet he has begun to explore his own emptiness through John, because John is normal, healthy, and of course, John is full of everything.

He listens to John wanking in the shower, his room, his bed. He listens to the patterns in John’s breath; he listens for the hiss of frustration and matches it with his own. John is so full of blood, so full of life; warm and hot and wet, while Sherlock is dry ice on the other side of the door. When John spends the night elsewhere, Sherlock imagines what he is up to. He imagines John naked, pressed up against another body, a foreign body. The thought of this body fills Sherlock with contempt.

He lies on John’s bed in the middle of the night. This has become a habit, a routine. He does it to see if John will notice, but John never notices because John observes nothing. Sherlock shuts his eyes, breathes in the freshly laundered essence of John, the slight undertone of dust. It is the smell of home. The room is cold. It feels ten times as large and empty because it is dark, and the darkness becomes analogous to the void; the gaping wound where his blood should be. He remembers that he was made to be passionless. He then exhales a stream of icy vapor, shivers a little, and tries to sleep.

But how can he sleep? He never sleeps. Not when John isn’t home. Not when John is in bed with someone else and they are warm together, moving together, naked and sweaty and sighing. Carnality; he knows nothing of it, only that it should disgust him, and yet he craves it. He imagines John in bed with him, naked and soft, hot all over. He imagines those lips, those tired eyes; the body fleshy and firm. John’s body is a real body, unlike his. Sherlock is a machine, a vast impassable matrix of gears and switches, matriculations, algorithms, an ordered system with a perfectly mechanical sensibility. He dreams of ordered systems and the uniformity of the cosmos. Cosmos is order and order is perfect.

In the dark he hugs himself; hugs John to himself. John is so human, hot-blooded, teeming with lust and pain; he’s seen death, he’s almost bled to death, he’s got blood on his hands. Sherlock bites his lip as he imagines John fighting for his life. It is easy to imagine John fighting. The memory is stitched onto the man’s face, folded into that brow, emanating from those hard eyes, and those eyes are so heavy and dark that they must be _full of everything_ unlike Sherlock who is pale and dry and empty of everything, one with the cold void; little more than a pristine invisible machine.

But right there, alone in the vastness; marooned on the bed, he is acutely aware that he is lacking something. The only thing he knows is that he wants. He is full of want, dripping with it. He rolls over, curls himself up, and extends his arm to the empty side of the bed, thinks of John, his soldier. He wills the thought to fill him up, to engulf him, and suddenly it does. He is there, confined to the perfection of a dream. He has never been had before, nor does he really wish to be, but some part of him believes that if there were ever a person _made for him_ , a person he would allow to defile him, to sully his sheets, to ruin him, to damn him to the couch of Eros, to shackle him to the whims of his own _carnal affectations_ – then that person would be John.

Eros. Born of chaos. The defiler of worlds; it is unclean. He knows that lusting is disorderly and unbecoming and unpredictable, and he knows that it will slow him down, but in this moment, with this stab in the vastness he will allow himself to lust, to feel, to imagine that he is not empty.

It’s well past two in the morning and he’s sinking into the sheets when John comes home. His eyes are heavy and glazed shut and he knows that John will come into the room soon, after kicking off his shoes and washing up. John calls his name. Sherlock can tell from the lilting intonation, the sluggish gait, and the obvious clatter of keys that John is intoxicated, and therefore he was not rolling about in bed with a woman.

Sherlock swings his legs out of bed, floats into the door frame, leans against it; his head is still full of cold air. He studies the small stream of light which emanates from the foot of the stairs; he then offers a hand in the direction of John’s voice.

“I’m up here.”

He hears John pattering up the stairs, predicts the question:

“Sherlock, what are you doing in my room?”

“I was thinking.”

He detects the soured smell of lager and a touch – more than a touch – of dark liquor, expensive scotch – _very_ expensive. Oh.

“So sorry. I rather liked her. She wasn’t an idiot.”

John laughs bitterly. “Oi, you. Shut it.”

So John is single, freshly single, and very drunk. Sherlock watches the familiar silhouette fill the space of dim yellow light; he can see that John is dressed for bed, t-shirt and pants. Sherlock keeps his hand tentatively outstretched, reaching for a shadow that he cannot see, and he feels it, feels the smooth expanse of John’s forearm, speckled with hairs, and the hairs are standing because John is anxious and conflicted and drunk, and Sherlock doesn’t know what he’s thinking anymore; all he knows is that John is alone and he is alone and John is hot and he is ice and there is no other time but _now_ because the entire universe has alighted at this very moment to bring them together, just like this.  


“I am sorry, John,” Sherlock says again. “I _did_ like her. You have spanking good taste in women.”

He pulls John into the room, into his arms, and to his surprise, John does not fight, does not resist, although he’s swaying on his feet, dragging them, and yawning.

“You hate all my girlfriends. You can’t even remember their names.”

Sherlock doesn’t miss a beat. “Lie down.”

“Mmm, yeah, that’s good. Good idea.”

John falls heavily onto the bed. Sherlock crawls in next to him and they remain like this for a few breaths. Perfectly still. In the dark Sherlock studies the outline of the body, John’s body, warm and tired. John is facing him, and their lips are close, and he can tell that John is looking right at him, and before John can say anything Sherlock kisses him. He’s never kissed anyone before, but it seems simple enough; just push the mouths together, disregard the line of wet between them, hold the tongue dutifully at bay.  


“Sherlock,” John says groggily.

“Sorry. Won’t do it again.”

“No, it’s…”

And this time John kisses him and takes Sherlock by surprise by nudging his mouth open with his tongue. Sherlock pushes his tongue out a bit, experimentally flicks it against John’s before withdrawing it with a slight embarrassed laugh. John pulls him in again, forcing him to swallow his laughter, and John’s mouth is warm and wet and the tongue is curious and suddenly kissing isn’t so awkward anymore. They kiss for a long time, soft and slow. When Sherlock pulls away he can’t help murmuring the obvious:

“You’re drunk.”

“Yeah, and? You kissed me first.”

“I was…experimenting.”

“Shut up.”

In the next moment John’s finger coaxes Sherlock’s chin up and he obeys. A soft keening sound arises from his throat as John kisses his neck, suctions his lips against the jugular, and lets a hand comb through Sherlock’s already messed hair. Sherlock closes his eyes, he’s sighing and trembling all over because he’s suddenly too hard and too full of want. He laments that his hips are arching up almost involuntarily, and he lets out a frustrated hiss. “John…”

He doesn’t know what he wants but _he wants it_ , and something about the room is coaxing him to _reach out and take it_ , and he does this by grabbing John and kissing him again, rolling onto his back, and letting John’s hand find its way under the waistband of his pyjamas. This is not something he would usually crave or care for, but tonight is different, this is John focusing that carnal intent on no one else but him, and because of that it is sacred. When John’s hand envelops him he almost comes right then and there and he has to lean away.  


“Wait,” he gasps out.

“You okay?” John’s voice is barely there; the man really is half asleep.

“I’m fine…I’m fine.” Sherlock says quickly, lamenting how wet John’s hand is already. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need very much, hmm?”

Sherlock vigorously shakes his head. It’s true; he doesn’t need much at all, and he tries to explain this but John has closed his fist around him again but he’s patient this time and lets Sherlock control the speed, letting him take just what he needs. Sherlock thrusts into that waiting hand a few times before John takes over, matching his previous slow, soft rhythm, and Sherlock tucks his head into the curve of John’s neck, breathes deeply against the laundered t-shirt, laments that he can’t seem to close his mouth. He’s very grateful for the darkness because suddenly he’s gasping and wiggling and spilling _everywhere_ ; hot and sticky on John's hand, his shirt, the sheets. He’s panting and sweating long after he is through, “Oh God,” he says, sitting up and squinting down at himself. “I can’t…I’ve made a mess, oh God.”

“It’s all right,” John laughs; it's a genuine laugh. Sherlock can feel himself blushing as John kisses the side of his head.

“Just clean yourself up, and come back to bed.”

-fin-

 

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of the mythos referenced in this fic, that is, all the stuff relating to the destructive capabilities of Eros, was more or less borrowed from the overall arc of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which spends a good deal of time informing the reader of the dangers of "irrational" love (e.g. narcissism, obsession, apathy) as well as the transformative properties of "correct" loving.
> 
> The "Couch of Eros" is a reference to Sir Tom Stoppard's masterful play, Arcadia, which has to do with chaos, entropy, heat death, and the destructive qualities of Eros. 
> 
> My best friend describes me as a "pristine invisible machine." 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who reads this one. I appreciate feedback of any kind and will respond to every single comment I receive.


End file.
